To be honest, I have never really been a fan of motorsport racing, but Formula E is something different. Regular sports car racing has always felt too loud, too polluting and a bit pointless, but electric car racing is changing my perception rapidly. The most recent Formula E race and associated FIA Smart Cities event in Santiago, Chile last week highlighted the importance of sustainable mobility and the advantages of advancing electric technology as quickly as possible. Extremely fast electric cars, whooshing by cheering audiences with a distinctly electric whizzing sound, made me realize that the future is definitely now.

If you skimmed the news this year, 2017 may have seemed like a tough year for climate change.

The US and the Caribbean endured a devastating hurricane season. People across Africa felt the impact of consecutive seasons of drought that scorched harvests and depressed livelihoods. And severe rains and flooding forced tens of thousands of evacuations in Asia.

We’ve all seen these headlines, and perhaps several others that leave us feeling discouraged, to say the least. The thing is, these headlines do not tell the full story.

The inspiring slogan of the UN Climate Change conference COP23 “Uniting for Climate Action – Further Faster Together” still reverberates in my daily thoughts. The World Bank Group partnered with the Fijian Presidency, the German hosts and numerous partners to spread the message of unity, and the urgent need to increase ambition and action.

The Latin America and the Caribbean region is moving quickly to introduce market incentives as a component of their climate change mitigation policy, for example, 24 countries have identified fiscal measures as a tool to implement their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). However, without a doubt, the Pacific Alliance countries are leading the region.

Just ask the investors: businesses in emerging markets can no longer afford to ignore the risks posed by the changing climate to their bottom lines. Ranging from increasingly frequent and severe weather events to new regulations and changing consumer preferences, climate change is fundamentally transforming the way we do business. Increasingly, companies and their investors are seeking opportunities to transition to and invest in climate-smart portfolios.

Global action on climate change to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals was a key message delivered by the Italian Ministry of the Environment, Land and Sea at the United Nations High Level Political Forum in New York. All4TheGreen, the Ministry’s collaboration with the Connect4Climate program of the World Bank Group, was presented as an important case-study to encourage citizen engagement to achieve a sustainable future. All4TheGreen was a week of more than 80 events in the lead-up to the recent G7 Environment minister’s meetings in the cultural and academic hub of Bologna, Italy.

When the world united around the historic Paris climate agreement, in 2015, the message was clear: It’s unfair to pass the burden of climate change to future generations.

We now need to put words into action. This week, leaders from 20 of the largest economies are meeting in Hamburg to find solutions to global challenges. Climate change will be front and center.

As the co-chairs of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), we want to accelerate climate action and reaffirm our commitment to carbon pricing. The discussions in Germany are a great opportunity to keep the momentum going.

Launched during the Paris climate talks, the CPLC now consists of 30 governments and over 140 businesses, all fighting for a common cause: to advocate for the pricing of carbon emissions across the world. We are calling for bold leadership from everyone – governments, companies, academia and civil society. The CPLC provides a forum for these groups to show collaborative leadership on carbon pricing.

A few years ago, this would have seemed a strange question, as debt management and climate policy have traditionally been regarded as unrelated fields. But at a workshop at the annual Debt Management Forum in Vienna on May 22, 2017, debt managers from 50 developing countries discussed the role of emerging debt instruments such as green bonds and blue bonds, in raising capital for climate-friendly projects that range from reforestation to renewable energy.

While green and blue bonds resemble more traditional debt instruments in terms of structure and returns, they represent a novel approach to climate finance. Created just ten years ago, the total value of green bonds has grown at a spectacular pace, reaching US$82.6 billion in 2016. By the end of 2017, the total value of green bonds will likely exceed US$100 billion.

Communities are working to reduce deforestation and forest degradation to address climate change in the DRC. Photo credit: Laura Otálora/The World Bank

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s efforts to shift to sustainable land use is producing first results in the Mai Ndombe province- an encouraging model for other countries seeking to reduce deforestation and forest degradation.

As I look out the window of our small propeller plane heading toward Inongo, the capital of the Mai Ndombe province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the difference in landscape is jarring. The areas around Kinshasa, the sprawling capital city with a population over 10 million, are marked by degraded lands with barely a tree in sight. As we fly further north and east, we pass over scattered patches of green on savannahs, but when we cross over into the Congo Basin, there are suddenly forests as far as the eye can see. Mai Ndombe, my final destination, spans more than 12 million hectares, most of which are forest, and is part of one of the most important tropical ecosystems left on earth.